Despite fears that he wouldn't be able to provide much in
the way of new information on the robocalls controversy, Chief Electoral
Officer Marc Mayrand more than lived up to his billing as star witness
at committee, and provided a somewhat unexpected, but entirely welcome
update on the file to a packed-to-the-rafters-and-then-some committee
room. According to Mayrand, as of today, the agency has accepted more
than 800 specific complaints -- covering approximately 200 ridings, a
number considerably higher than pretty much anyone had been expecting --
and 250 open files currently before the elections commissioner.

Not surprisingly, that didn't go over terribly well on the government
side of the table, where Conservative members, apparently unprepared for
such detailed disclosure, were forced into an ad hoc defence that
involved attempting to downplay the new numbers, as well as suggesting
that a good number of the allegedly misdirection calls could have been
inadvertent misdirection resulting from inaccurate information on the
voters list. Mayrand, however, took issue with the suggestion that a
call that involved posing as Elections Canada could be explained away as
an honest mistake, and chided prime ministerial parliamentary secretary
Dean Del Mastro for his own "unfounded allegation" that Elections
Canada itself was leaking information to reporters. (Somewhat bizarrely,
Del Mastro claimed that he had been made aware of this allegation from
other (unnamed) reporters, who allegedly called his office to complain
about it.)

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About the Author

Kady O'Malley has been covering the Hill for more than a decade (yes, really) for a variety of publications. An Ottawa girl (not quite born, but raised), she has a passion for politics that borders on the unhealthy, and has liveblogged her way through hundreds of committee meetings, press conferences, judicial inquiries, budget launches, cabinet shuffles, and even the odd constitutional crisis. Oh, and yes, her Boston Terrier really is named "BlackBerry."
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